Sub sections:
What's In a Name?
Semester I 2005
Dr Drew Khlentzos
dkhlentz@pobox.une.edu.au
(Education 108, 7 March 2005, 12 noon)
Abstract
Some philosophers and semantic theorists think the answer is: a set of defining characteristics. Others think that names and descriptions differ sharply in their semantics - the function of names is not to describe their bearers but only to tag them. The first camp regard names as compressed descriptions, the second deny names have any descriptive content. In this seminar I review the considerations that led twenty five years ago to a revolutionary theory in semantics known as The Direct Theory of Reference, a theory with novel implications not only for names but more broadly for the relation between mind and world.